Duat is a modern text editor, with great defaults and even greater extensibility. It is heavily inspired by Kakoune, which means it has first class support for multiple selections, via selection first modal editing.

It is written and configured in Rust, through the use of a config crate. The configuration can then be reloaded without closing Duat, by being recompiled as requested.

The use of Rust brings a lot of benefits, not only for its (in)famous memory safety, but also the general stability of the language and great tooling. As a benefit for example, cargo is my plugin manager, which works out really well.

Rust is also known for long compile times, but for Duat, I’ve managed to reduce the vast majority of reloads to under 1 second, with a large chunk taking less than 700 ms (on my 7 year old budget gaming laptop).

Do keep in mind that this is a work in progress, so there might be bugs. Any feedback on features, bugs or requests is highly appreciated 🥰.

To install Duat, I am assuming that you have cargo installed on your system, if you don’t, install it. If you are installing it on Windows, you should additionlly follow the instructions that they give you for installing C/C++ libraries through Visual Studio.

On this section, I will be referring to duat’s configuration by ~/.config/duat/, but you should replace it with your operating system’s config path.

Next, in order to run duat, you should add ~/.cargo/bin/ to your $PATH variable. Alternatively, you can just add ~/.cargo/bin/duat, if you want to add just duat to the $PATH.

Now, you can install duat:

cargo install duat
duat --cfg

That is the recommended version, however, if you wish to install the bleeding edge version, you can call this instead:

cargo install --git https://github.com/AhoyISki/duat
duat --cfg

And in the prompt, you will say y to the question about depending on the git version of Duat.

When you first run duat, you will be prompted for the creation of a new configuration crate in ~/.config/duat/ (unless it already exists).

In the configuration’s src/lib.rs, there should be a setup_duat! macro, which takes in a function with a &mut Opts parameter, for initial config options.

This function is the setup for duat, and it can be empty, which is the equivalent of running the default configuration for Duat.

Here’s a config example. Note the usage of type arguments to allow for compile time guarantees:

setup_duat!(setup);
use duat::prelude::*;

fn setup(opts: &mut Opts) {
    map::<Insert>("jk", "<Esc>");

    opts.wrap_lines = true;
    opts.scrolloff.y = 5;
    opts.linenumbers.align = std::fmt::Alignment::Right;
    opts.fmt_status(|pa| {
        let upper_mode = mode_name().map(|m| m.to_uppercase());

        status!("[mode]{upper_mode}{Spacer}{name_txt} {sels_txt} {main_txt}")
    });

    hook::add::<ModeSwitched>(|_, switch| match switch.new.name {
        "Insert" => cursor::set_main(CursorShape::SteadyBar),
        _ => cursor::unset(),
    });

    form::set("mode", Form::new().dark_magenta());
    colorscheme::set("catppuccin-mocha");
}

This configuration does the following things:

• Maps jk to esc in the Insert mode;
• Sets options for the Buffer, LineNumbers and StatusLine
• Adds hooks for mode changes in Duat, which change the shape of the cursor;
• Changes the style of the mode printed on the status line;
• Sets a colorscheme

These are only some of the options available to configure Duat, you can also add custom commands, completely change the layout with your own widgets, create custom modes (like vim, emacs, or helix), and many other things!

Duat also comes with many builtin features, like an lsp-server, tree-sitter support, snippets, a whichkey widget, and even multi-step completion.

Duat provides a lot of features, trying to be as configurable as possible, here are some of the things that Duat is capable of:

• Completely custom modes, with full Vim style remapping.
• Completely custom widgets, floating or part of the UI.
• A fantastic Text system, allowing for easy and flexible creation of visual interfaces.
• Custom hooks, whose activation is up to the creator.
• Custom commands, with customizable parameters supported by Rust’s robust type system.
• Multi UI adaptability, although for now, only a terminal UI has been made.
• And many others.

Additionally, by choosing Rust as its configuration language, Duat also gains the following features:

• Complete type safety;
• A very functional programming language, with great compile time guarantees;
• Fantastic tooling and a great ecosystem.
• Cargo is the plugin manager;

These are the goals that have been accomplished or are on their way:

• Implement basic visual functionality (printing, scrolling, etc);
• Implement wrapping;
• Implement editing;
• Create a kak mode;
• Implement the use of multiple cursors;
• Implement a history system;
• Implement colors;
• Implement widgets and designated areas;
• Make all of these things easy to use on a public interface;
• Create a number line and a separator line;
• Create a status line;
• Buffer switching;
• Create a command creation interface and a command line;
• Add the ability to frame areas;
• Implement concealment;
• Implement hot reloading of configuration;
• Create a “normal editing” mode;
• Add the ability to create hooks;
• Create a more generalized plugin system;
• Implement incremental Regex searching;
• Implement tree-sitter;
• Add floating widgets, not tied to the session layout;
• Implement autocompletion lists;
• Create an LSP plugin;
• Create a vim mode;

︙

• Create a gui frontend;

An internal (and more detailed) TODO list, which might hard to understand, can be found in TODO. This list is not a comprehensive roadmap, as I will ocasionally remove entries from it, particularly those at the top section, which are meant for a specific update.

NOTE: These are not set in stone, and may be done out of order.

I don’t know what your personal reasoning would be, but in my case, I really like Kakoune’s editing model, but was frustrated with the lack of some features, like folding, multiple buffer editing, the general barebonesness of the configuration, etc.

I know that Neovim has all of these features, and Helix supposedly tries to solve some of these issues. But I don’t really like either of their editing styles to be honest.

And so I thought, why not make my own text editor?

I thought, why not make a text editor that is as modular as possible, while still having a sensible default configuration, that I could modify however I wanted, and with a language that I love?

That’s why I decided to create Duat.

idk, cool sounding word that I got from Spelunky 2.